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Curry and Tripe at M.S.A.

The Malaysian Students Association kicked this year off badly with a 'Curry, Films and Folksongs' evening, on Saturday night. While the curry was superb and the songs tolerable, one of the films was foul. About 200 students, mostly Malaysians, were unwitting victims of a cunning piece of Moral Rearmament propaganda.

The main film of the evening was a tribute to one William Mkomo, a black South African revolutionary who turned into a Jesus freak 'Moral Rearmer'. "I used to believe in violence, I swore to drive the white man from my country," said Mkomo. "But then I saw white men who had changed, who weren't arrogant. I had hated the white man because I thought he was treating me wrongly. I asked God to forgive me, and I went to the white man and apologised. The white man said, he should have apologised first."

All this apologising is very sweet, but it is hardly breaking the yoke of fascism and poverty in South Africa.

The film included a series of testimonies to Mkomo's faith, spoken by his followers looking candidly into the camera and speaking haltingly from the heart — they were so sincere, it just oozed out of the screen.

"Mkomo had a message for us," said one. "Man must change." The old freak line, no realisation that it is society that shapes man, so to change man you first must change society. The 'change yourself first' argument is popular these days, not that original sin has gone out of favour. Its little more than a rehash.

On violence, Mkomo had this to say: "When two elephants fight, the grass is trampled. It is the ordinary man who suffers." Mkomo had been bought off with a few token reforms. Crowed the narrator: "He was the first African to have a school named after him."

After another dose of "the biggest thing that man needs is to attend to his character, when we have men and women of character in the world then we can all stand shoulder to shoulder together as sons and daughters of God," the film ended with Mkomo's religious drivel belting out while the film lingered on green, nostalgic shots of the South African veldt.

Most of the audience didn't know quite what had hit them. The film was cleverly produced and would be quite persuasive to anyone unaware of the grimness of political reality in South Africa, and unaware of the futility of personal religious conversion as a mean of social change. The MSA made no attempt to show the other side of the story.

Questioned by Salient after the film, MSA President Ken Lim, said that a member of MSA who was in the Moral Rearmament had suggested that the film be shown. None of the MSA committee were Moral Rearmers, said Lim. He had no political views either way about South Africa or about the political-religious line of the propaganda (which would apply equally well, or badly if you happen to agree with Salient, to the Malaysian revolutionary situation).

MSA has long been regarded with suspicion by progressive individuals and groups on campus, including MSSA (Malaysian Singapore Students Association). The showing of such a film can only rein-force the impression that the MSA exists to serve the interests of the reactionary elements in society.